They are supposed to get powered through the 6-pin JST female connector that has been pre-attached to the encoder. But while looking for a suitable male JST header, I can’t seem to find any that are ok with such a high current. Most seem to be rated for 2-3A. Also, the wire gauge that has been used for this specific motor is not listed in the specs.
So my question is two-fold;
Is it really ok to power the motors through these JST connectors, with a 20A stall current?
Any advice on where to find a suitable male header for this specific connector?
Thanks for responding!
I wasn’t planning to stall the motor, but I plan to limit the current to about 75% of the stall current in order not to lose too much torque when driving uphill.
So that would still be 15A, which is quite a bit higher than what a JST connector is supposed to handle.
I also figured out that the wire gauge is only AWG 24 which is graded for ~3.5A. But that would mean that this motor should only be pushed up to about 18% of its stall torque and current (and even less if I take into account mechanical inefficiency or back-emf when reversing), which seems strange to me.
I’ll contact Servocity directly for more info, thanks!
It took a while for ServoCity to reply, but here it is:
Soldering some heavier-duty wire to the two spade terminals that come off the back of the motor itself would be the best bet for a high-load situation.
This is a change we’re looking into making to future motors, but it’s not one that has been implemented yet.
So I’m replacing the stock JST-PH 6-pin wire-to-board connector with a JST-PAL 4-pin wire-to-wire connector for the encoder wires, and two bigger AWG-12 wires with XT60 connectors for the power supply.
Might be useful for other users :).
